Social Justice Warrior Archetypes

Types of Social Justice Warriors

Picture courtesy of the Escapist.

Once upon a time there was a staff meeting of a student government association at a major university in North America for an all-important rally to show the university administration what the student body really wanted. This was the first such meeting for this body, and having just come into office on the waves of an impressive 5% voter turnout, they knew that they had the pulse of what the students at their large university of 30,000 students wanted because of the votes of the 1500 who bothered to show up. Or, so they thought, because each member of the executive board had a different agenda.

This play will attempt to demonstrate the different archetypes of the Social Justice Warrior that I've encountered in my nearly decade-long exposure to campus activism. I'm sure that there are more than what I'm listing. If you think of more put them in the comments and I'll do a follow up to this silliness in the near future. For now it is sufficient to list the three types: the Identity Warrior, the Politico, and the Jobber. Each has a different part they play and different concerns they bring to the job – and I say 'job' because officers at a surprisingly high amount of these schools get paid tobe professional activists . A unifying feature of each of the three types is a belief that student governments matter when, other than their legal duty to distribute the student fee, they don't. Of the three types, however, the Jobber believes this the least.

Courtesy of Panther Online. SGAs spend a lot of money on some silly things.

Returning to our play.....the Student Body President, a three-year veteran of the SGA who got their start as an intern for a long-departed president, and herself a Politico with ambitions of being a US Senator some day, calls the meeting to order. Her Vice-President, a student with deep ties to student athletes and the fraternities, and himself a very successful Jobber, calls pound his hands on the table to get the team to shut up so the meeting can commence. They have very important things to plan.

The Politico is someone who seeks to work in real politics in the future. They aren't limited to working in Student Governments. There are variants of this found in student media, student organizations, and non-profits including political parties. They want to turn the time they invested in The Cause into something bigger: work as a legislative aide in the state legislature in the next few years, followed by work for the state party and potentially public office after that. It is often overlooked that Student Body Presidents have several doors opened for them in the future because of how well that position is seen by future employers, including politicians and professional activists. Political science and economics majors abound.

The Student Body President begins with following basic Roberts Rules of Order to ensure that the meeting is efficiently run. The organization's Multicultural Affairs Director (yes, they exist), herself an Identity Warrior, asks that an item be added to the agenda to discuss the needs of the Black Student Union. Everyone agrees, with the Vice President seconding the motion. She will be given 5 minutes to speak, with discussion limited to 10 minutes thereafter.

The Jobber is there because they needed a job and wanted to do something they thought would help make the university community a better place to live and study. This is where I fell on this spectrum, whether it was when I worked in student government, on the campus media, or in university housing as a Resident Assistant. Driven by both financial need and a desire to serve (and avoid making coffee/sandwiches for a living), Jobbers are often concerned with efficiency and getting the job done, whatever that may be. Jobbers frequently make up the ranks of the overlooked positions, which often have the most real-world skills, including media relations, Chief of Staff, and the positions most involved in keeping the office functioning. Often the education they have or are pursuing runs the gamut because, again, they just want to a job that matters.

Logic not required to be a far left professional activist.

The staff member who focuses on the work for the Women's Resource Center, the LGBTQ Resource Center, and childcare facilities on campus speaks up and reminds everyone to use proper pronouns and not assume anyone's identity. This person is obviously a devoted Identity Warrior and budding professional intersectional feminist who never fails to remind people that the Patriarchy is everywhere and keeping tabs on what they do. Most people nod in agreement, though a few remain silent so as to not offend anyone (or get fired). Everyone goes around the table, introducing themselves and their preferred pronouns...and, as usual the pronouns fit the outward expectation. But, on to business.

The Identity Warrior is the most notorious of the Social Justice Warriors. These are the people who claimviolent video games promote rape, claim that a rape culture exists in the West despite a total lack of evidence, or declare that literally everything is sexist andproblematic. Most often, this group have a background in sociology or any of its most extremist offshoots, including gender studies or critical race theory or some combination thereof. These are the truest of true believers and aim to have a life of professional activism. When critics talk about cultural Marxists, look no further than these special snowflakes who seem immune to the facts of history that show Marxism to be a horrific ideology with an enormous body count of mostly poor people in Asia and Eastern Europe.

Everything is problematic. Everything. Including the author of this blog.

The meeting goes as expected. A meeting of the Student Senate is assembled, directions for developing committee rules and deadlines are set, and the next meeting is scheduled. The bulk of the time is used 'debating' the needs presented by the resident Identity Warriors on staff, despite no dissenting voices speaking out and everyone agreeing. The meeting lasts 2 hours, of which an hour and a half was spent preaching to the choir. Each member of the executive team will go to their subordinates to work on the issues raised by the Identity Warriors. The President will quietly work on the directives given to her by the 'nonpartisan' statewide student association, mostly registering voters.

There are several places that Social Justice Warriors come from in universities. Student Government Associations are the most potent, though housing programs and campus media are also important pipelines for leadership. A recurring factor for these types is that often their leadership positions require so much time spent on activism that grades suffer. In this they are professional student activists first, and students second. A common refrain when things in the movement are going well is 'I wish I could do this without being a student,' with the absurdity of that statement being lost on most involved.

I may make this story recurring. Our budding student leaders have important things to work on, including the passing of a student budget and fighting the all-knowing Patriarchy on campus, despite the majority of college students being women. But I digress, because the legally mandated work student governments do typically gets done by far more moderate students: those that make up the incidental fee committees of universities. I wouldn't even characterize them collectively as SJWs due ot their frequently being isolated from the madhouse that is the Senate and Executive branches of SGAs. Unlike the rest of our student leadership team, who are too busy protesting a 'militarized' campus security force and excrement-based race-baiting graffiti, the fee committee members have actual work to do.